Not really being organized enough (I had a lot of antenna work to get done
and wasn't sure how much would be ready - more on that later) to do our
usual multi/single or multi-multi contest effort, we had decided to do
several single op/single band efforts fom here. The plan was to have:
VA6RA Dave on 80 high power
VE6BF Bill on 40 QRP
VE6JY (operator "Doc" VE2QV) on 20 hi power
VE6WQ Joel on 15 hi power
VA6MA Maurice on 10m low power
A forecast of a solar storm made us decide to change the 40m class from
QRP to low power. With a storm, even with good antennas, a kw can feel
like QRP. Like spittin' into the wind. For the first evening, 80 and 40
are tough, 20 and 10 are quite good and 15m is just excellent. Before Joel
grabs a short 90 minute nap nine hours into the contest, his 15m log shows
97 countries 34 zones and over 600 contacts. He sleeps well but not long
as 15 will stay open all night over the pole and yield some rare
countries.
10m was behaving strangely and I kept checking outside to see if the
northern lights were starting up. AT 0530 UTC the only signal on 10m was
A52W zone 22 from Bhutan! He stayed around for a while and then was
joined by some European and Middle East stations. Signals were weak and
with just low power (100 watts) none got in the log. Time for a rest.
After answering the alarm around 1100 UTC, he finally gets some in the
log. All signals peak on the single antenna that is pointed to Japan,
regardless of where the signal is coming from! Another trip outside showed
the weak aurora I had noticed earlier was now directly overhead. Not what
we wanted to see. While 10 and 15 continue to be productive, the rest of
the bands get tougher as you go lower in frequency. Local sunrise brings
lots of fairly good European signals on 80m and a few are worked. But
generally the aurora and the associated one way skip conditions - we can
hear but not be heard - prevents a lot of good multipliers from getting
them all in the log.
During the day, the 40 and 80m night crew get some rest but the high bands
don't allow that luxury. 20m is open around the clock so Doc VE2QV grabs a
short nap here and there. We worry that his snoring will get us fan mail
from the seismic monitoring station.... In spite of the "local QRM" Joel
leads the attack with rates well into the 100++ per hour for long periods
as well as getting some great zone and country multipliers.
At the end of the first 24 hours:
ops QSO's Country Zones
VA6RA 80m 319 23 15
VE6BF 40mlp 101 55 24
VE2QV 20m 825 111 33
VE6WQ 15m 1800 139 39
VA6MA 10mlp 660 74 30
Halfway into the contest - it's about now that the wheels really fall off
some of the bands. The dire forecast from the mid week disturbance comes
to pass and signals on the high bands get very warbly - that auroral sound
we don't really want to hear. The few signals that were on 80 fade away
and although Dave will keep trying, not another contact will be made on
80. Everyone keeps plugging away and hoping it's just a short disturbance.
Unfortunately, we will have the next 9 hours at minor storm levels and
then the remainder of the contest will still be at disturbed levels. The
joys of contesting from a relatively high northern latitude.
The traditionally slow hours from 12 to 6am local are even slower than
usual. At times even 15m is virtually dead and what signals are heard on
the other bands have already been worked or they can't hear us. No 15m
contacts from 0400 to 1400 - that really hurt! 10m was open virtually all
night in spite or because of - we're not sure - the stormy conditions.
Open into the rare Indian sub continental countries in zone 22 and 23 plus
the mideastern zones 20 and 21 plus a few signals from the tough African
zones of 37 and 39. This was even better than the opening the first night
but non were worked with our 100 watts so it didn't help! The higher bands
do recover a bit by mid morning but only 15m has a fairly steady rate. Any
talk of records has been academic and usually had the comment "if only
conditions had held up" and/or "maybe next year" somewhere in the
conversation.
Final numbers:
BAND Raw QSOs Valid QSOs Points Countries Zones Final
_______________________________________________________________________
80SSB 320 311 584 23 15 22,192
40SSB 119 119 300 62 25 26,100
20SSB 1037 1031 2613 139 37 459,888
15SSB 2820 2818 7068 151 39 1,342,920
10SSB 925 925 2158 89 32 261,118
_______________________________________________________________________
As a matter of interest, if the 5 single band logs were combined into a
multi multi score:
Totals 5221 5204 12723 464 148
(Hypothetical only!!) Final Score = 7,786,476 points.
Summer/fall antenna work leading up to the CQWW.....
I had some ambitious moments this spring and planned several repair
projects plus some new construction. The 3 element 40m had lost a few feet
of aluminum on the reflector, which turned it into a director, and we
likely had been using it "backwards" for a year or two. It did seem to
work, but I'm sure performance was compromised. That has been repaired
and put back up on a different tower. At the same time, a bigger 40m
monobander was being built. Denis VE6AQ did the electrical design and we
both built similar versions - 5 elements on a 60' boom made from aluminum
tower sections. One yagi is up at the VE6FI contest site near Morinville
and the other is here. Both yagis went up within a few days of each other,
so we'll see who's physical design will hold up to mother nature over the
long run. We got some gusts near 70km/hr just after mine went up and so
far all is well with both antennas. They are rated for a lot more but what
the weak link is, we don't really know. Yet. Denis had to add 10'of tower
section (to hold the rotor system) to their 110' tower and I still had to
erect a 150' tower to hold mine. Lots of work there.
In between all that the 80m yagi - the big problem - needed to have the
one bent element repaired, which meant it needed to come down. It has been
up for 2 years so I don't worry as much when the winds blow. The one bent
section had a weaker allow of aluminum - my mistake. Yet the other
element half survived even with the "conduit" grade aluminum, so it wasn't
far off. While it was down, it needed to have a whole new rotor system as
well. One section of tower was removed and replaced with a shorter one,
complete with a revamped homebrew rotor system, and then the repaired yagi
was put back on top, now also at 150 feet.
The last big project was to stack four 7 element 10m yagis (they had been
built and tested last year) on a 145 foot tower, one just above each guy
level. Each yagi required a home brew sidemount rotor system, so the 3
lower yagis can be rotated around the tower, giving approx. 300 degrees of
coverage.
It was all completed about a week before the end of October (and the CQWW
contest) so there was even enough time to build some rotor controls and
get everything hastily wired together. Everything behaved perfectly during
the contest. The only slip up was with the top 2 10m yagis in the stack -
they were interchanged in the control circuitry, so we were not using the
antenna we thought we were in some cases. Between that and the skewed
paths on 10m, the 10m op never knew which antenna to choose! The wiring
error was corrected during the 2nd night.
We'll likely do a similar effort in CQWW CW but right now, need to get
organized for ARRL SS coming up...
73 de
Don VE6JY
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